Tark watched his sister and friend walk away from his new temporary home. His feelings were mixed. Galena turned to look once more at him while he watched her, saying no more. He’d said his goodbyes. Now, all he could do was train others and hope for the best. The chances of seeing her again were slim, but he knew what they would be if he didn’t stay behind to work with others. Sadness and hope welled up in him as they disappeared from view.
Turning and going back into the house, he noticed for perhaps the first time, just how big his new accommodations were. His feelings of loneliness intensified when he realized that it would be just him for a while. He sighed heavily and went up the stairs. No sense staying three floors up when there would be no one staying with him.
After bringing down his pack to his new room, another problem presented itself. No water. With Galena around, there had been an endless supply of water whenever they needed a drink, a bath, or for anything else. Now, he would have to resort to digging a well before the week was out in order to supply all the water he would need while he stayed here. This task was hard enough in the spring or summer, but in the winter, it would be three times as difficult considering how hard the frozen ground was. He groaned inwardly when he thought about the amount of work in store for him over the next couple of days. With this dreadful thought in mind, he missed Galena even more.
First thing is first, he thought to himself. I need to talk to Amrick and her commitment partner to get this started. He left home and started out in the direction they had originally come into the village, because as he recalled, Amrick’s house was the first one just on the outside. He walked down a little path he hadn’t noticed previously for a few minutes before he came to the tiny little home. He knew it was theirs, because Quona was playing on the doorstep. He watched as she sat, her upper half completely bent over on her legs as she examined the writings she was creating with a small stick. She seemed intent on her work and did not show any indication she heard him approaching.
Not wanting to startle her, but seeing no way around it, he practically whispered, “Hello again.” Just as he had predicted, the tiny elf nearly jumped two feet into the air. An impressive feat considering she was sitting at the time.
“I’m sorry.” He smiled when she looked indignantly at him.
“I thought you left this morning,” she said bluntly.
“Galena and Elenio did. I decided to stay for reasons I need to discuss with your mom and dad. Are they around?”
She nodded and with a jerk of her thumb, indicated that they were in the house. He stepped past her, laughing quietly as she resumed her doodles in the dirt. He knocked on the door while pushing it open to alert them that it wasn’t their daughter entering. Tark stepped into a sunlit room that must have served as their common area. Amrick stopped kneading the bread that sat covered in flour on a round table near one of the windows in the large room. She reminded him painfully of his own sweet commitment partner. How he missed her!
“I thought you left this morning,” she said, surprise written all over her face.
“My sister and Elenio left at sunrise. If you have a moment, I would like to take the time to explain my reason for staying behind. I gathered from the other day, that you are among the elder elves of this village?”
“Aye.” She turned her head as a male elf a little older than she, entered the common area from another room. He too had blonde hair that was thrown into a tail. He stood much taller than Tark with thick shoulders and muscular body. His arms were completely bare of clothing despite the cold weather and covered in burn marks. Tark noticed this, but said nothing, nodding in the direction of the giant elf.
“This is my commitment partner, Fala. You were saying?”
Fala nodded in return as a way of greeting and sat down on one of the chairs surrounding the table. He looked even larger, sitting on the tiny chair, if that was possible.
He would be a great ally, Tark thought to himself. “May I sit?”
With a jerk of her head, Amrick indicated he could sit in the chair opposite of Fala. Tark sat quickly, gathering his thoughts on where to start and decided on the beginning. He started with how his family and he were descendants of Lamiria and because of a visit from Mira, his son Moira began to train his own children in the art of fighting. Through the generations, this tradition had passed from elf to elf, until it reached Tark and Galena. He explained how his father trained him and his siblings to fight with bows, swords, and any other weapon available to them as his own father had. He proceeded to explain how they discovered Galena’s magical abilities and what this meant to the elf race. He told of their journey and the difficulties that they’d come across. How they thought they’d lost Galena at one point, only to have Mira save her and completely heal her.
“Now, my tale brings to me to here and what happened the other day. I chose to stay so I may train other elves to fight and to defend their villages as well. Torlics have been given free reign over us. It can only be a matter of time before Rau’s other monsters are allowed the same privileges. I don’t want to see any elf suffer because of Rau’s anger toward us, but more importantly, I want to see the end of elf enslavement. That means we have to be ready to back Galena and help her get into Blackwell. She is headed to a cave in the western woods as Mira indicated she should, to retrieve the Sword of Lumina.” At this point, Tark had to stop, because Amrick broke into laughter. Even Fala had a goofy smile on his face.
“The Sword of Lumina is a child’s tale.” Amrick laughed.
“You saw what my sister is capable of. Did you not notice her hands were clear from the Mark of Rau?” Tark asked patiently.
At this Amrick grew serious once more.
“There is a sword, Mira has indicated that much. Whether Galena survives the journey into the cave is a whole other matter. My point is, no matter what, we have to be prepared to defend ourselves. Do you really think Rau is going to forget and forgive after all of this? No, he’s going to make sure we pay for the trouble we’ve caused.”
“It seems to me, we should hand you and your family over to Rau to bargain with for peace,” Fala said in a smooth baritone voice.
Tark had never heard such a low voice. “How long do you think that will last?”
Fala didn’t answer his question, but averted his eyes to the table, tracing the knots in the wood with his fingers.
Amrick continued to knead the bread, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration.
“Besides, haven’t you had enough of all of this?” Tark held up his hands, displaying the ugly marks Rau bestowed on all of them. Amrick stopped and looked out the door at her daughter who had stopped what she was doing to listen to their conversation. She smiled gently at the child before turning her attention back to Tark.
“Who would you want to train?”
“Whoever would be willing. We also need to send more elves out to other villages to recruit from them. The more we can get, the better.”
Amrick nodded in agreement to this.
“What about weapons?” Fala asked.
“Either I have missed my guess or you’re in the wrong profession, but you’re a blacksmith, correct?” Tark said, looking Fala squarely in the face.
“The burn marks are a dead giveaway, ey?” Fala said, the corner of his mouth lifted in a half grin.
“That and they would be crazy to use a huge elf such as yourself for anything other than that. I could show you my sword and I’m sure you would have no problem duplicating it, even creating new and better ones. As more elves come, hopefully, more will be blacksmiths as well. You could teach them all. In fact, I think we should send out the call for blacksmiths as well as any elf who wants to train to fight.”
“Cooks too. If we’re going to have this many elves congregating here, we’re going to need as much help as possible.”
Tark eagerly nodded at this statement. He hadn’t thought of that aspect of training.
“The biggest problem we have to overcome is getting other villages and other elves to rise to the occasion,” Fala stated, he had left his tracing of the knots in the table to begin tracing the hated mark on the back of his own hand.
“I agree. But if they have torlics invading their own homes, I think that’ll be enough to push them toward this idea. It was one thing to know the torlics existed and were evil beings that carried out Rau’s biddings; it’s another thing to have them as a part of everyday life. Searching through homes, terrifying our children, making life even harder. When we point this out, I’m sure we’ll get more than a few willing to take a stand.”
Amrick and Fala exchanged looks, clearly wanting to see where the other stood on the matter.
“Well, we need to gather the other elders then. We have some explaining and persuading to do,” Amrick said, sighing wearily.
It was late that night when Tark finally returned to the treehouse. Dragging his feet up the stairs, he collapsed face first into the bed that the night before, Galena and Elenio claimed. He was tired, but satisfied. After explaining to elder after elder his plan and answering each of their questions and debating with them on every point, he felt he had battled an army of torlics. Mind games, in his opinion, were harder than any physical battle he had been through. Give him a sword and a torlic any day of the week!
Hours later, he finally succeeded in convincing them to join him in his endeavors against Rau. They had to work out the finer points in the morning, but they’d already started spreading the word around the village that Tark would be training any elf that was willing to fight. At the time they finally agreed to this, it seemed to Tark a meager reward for such a hard day’s work. He never wanted to be an elder; they gave him headaches.
He wondered vaguely how far Galena and Elenio had made it and if they’d run into any more trouble along the way. How he wished he could see Taura and Silva once more. His heart ached as they sprang into his mind, both every bit as beautiful as the day he left them. He would make the world safe for them, even if it took his own life to do so.
He briefly considered going back to his own village to recruit elves there, but rejected the thought almost in the same moment. He didn’t think he would have the strength to leave his precious family again. He rolled over onto his side, letting memories of them run through his mind until he slipped into a sleep filled with dreams of family and friends.